Page:The portrait of Mr. W. H (IA portraitofmrwh01wild).pdf/36

 out that the absence of Willie Hughes' name from this list really corroborated the theory, as it was evident from Sonnet LXXXVI, that he had abandoned Shakespeare's company to play at a rival theatre, probably in some of Chapman's plays. It was in reference to this that in the great sonnet on Chapman Shakespeare said to Willie Hughes—

"But when your countenance filled up his line, Then lacked I matter; that enfeebled mine'—"

the expression 'when your countenance filled up his line' referring clearly to the beauty of the young actor giving life and reality and added charm to Chapman's verse, the same idea being also put for ward in Sonnet LXXIX:

"Whilst I alone did call upon thy aid, My verse alone had all thy gentle grace, But now my gracious numbers are decayed, And my sick Muse doth give another place';"

and in the immediately preceding sonnet, where Shakespeare says,

"'Every alien pen hath got my use And under thee their poesy disperse,'"

the play upon words (use = Hughes) being of